End of the Morn
by wynnebat
Summary: He'd expected her to look like Lily. Minor AU and a smidgen of Peter/Petunia.


Warnings: Biased point of view.

Notes: Beta'd by the awesome MrsBates93.

.

"—End!" a familiar voice finishes as the Floo's flames glow green. From the kitchen nook in Hollowick End, the Pettigrews' home, Peter can see the side of a pale face appear in the flames.

"Hullo. I'm looking for Peter Pettigrew," the voice continues. The _female_ voice. Peter almost drops his wand.

"Peter?" his mother calls. "Honey, there's a woman in the Floo." They're both surprised; women don't call Peter. But Ms. Pettigrew's tone is pleasant, as though it's an everyday occurrence. Even bedridden and frail, his mother is a good liar.

He goes to the living room and kneels down by the fireplace, expecting his boss, or maybe a young neighbour needing help. But the green flames lick bright red hair as Peter's heart pounds at an uneven beat. Peter can tell who it is by the hair alone. It's Lily Evans who looks back at him, uncomfortably glancing from his mother to him, as though his mother might assume something. Peter sighs.

"Mum, this is Lily," he says, gesturing from one woman to the other. "James' fiancée. Lily, my mother, Abigail Pettigrew."

"A pleasure," Lily says with a smile she's never bestowed upon Peter. In his head, Peter labels it her 'polite around parents' smile. It's gentler than the smile she gives to teachers, but maybe that's because she can sense his mother's frailty even through the Floo. She turns to him; all her attention and the strength of her green eyes on him for once. "Peter, I'm sorry if I'm bothering you."

_You can bother me anytime, anyplace, for any reason, _Peter thinks._ As long as it's not something for James._

"It's not a problem. What can I do for you?" Because Lily would never call him unless there's something he can do to help her in some way.

"My sister's coming home from her school in Northampton and I promised my parents I'd drive her home from the train station. They're out of town. But Marlene's just come over and she's sobbing on my couch and I just can't— Peter, it's just one time—"

"It's fine, Lily," he says, wishing he could pat her shoulder in consolation. But she's far away in Godric's Hollow, and Floo systems are tricky things. "Should I Apparate her?"

Lily's pale skin flushes, noticeable even under the green flames. "Would you, please? You might have to convince her, because she's not good with magic."

That's probably why he's rarely heard of Lily's sister, Peter thinks. And probably why Lily wants him to do it instead of one of the others – she's just that bit ashamed of her sister, and she's not sure how they'll take to her. But it's fine to ask him, because she doesn't care about boring, mousy Peter's opinion.

_You're starting to sound like Moaning Myrtle_, he tells himself.

"Okay, sure. What's the Apparition coordinates?"

It's all worth it for Lily's bright smile.

.

He changes quickly into the under-robe clothes he wore at school. They don't look quite Muggle, but he thinks Lily's sister won't care too much. She'll probably want him to tell her all about his world.

At the bottom of his closet, there's a hatbox firmly closed and warded to his blood. There's a white mask and a school photo inside. He opens it sometimes, stroking the mask's features. It will turn silver once he finally decides to choose the Dark Lord over the three grinning, laughing boys in the photo next to it.

.

If he'd had time to think between the time Lily told him about her sister and the time he went to get her, he would've thought Petunia would look like Lily. Red hair, bright green eyes, lovely heart-shaped face. The kind of beautiful woman you want to see after a hard day's work.

Maybe she'd even be a more approachable Lily, because she'd be awed by something he had and she didn't. Petunia Evans was a Muggle, after all.

He thought he'd recognize her as she got off the train, that her red hair would signal his attention like Lily's often did.

By the time the last person, an elderly man, departed from the carriage, he decides that he's already missed her.

"Petunia Evans?" he calls out. People are talking loudly in the crowded station, too loudly for her to hear him. "Petunia Evans!" he calls again.

"I'm Petunia Evans," he hears a voice say.

When he turns around, time doesn't freeze out of consideration for their meeting. He doesn't feel a tightening in his chest because of her beauty. Petunia Evans is strikingly ordinary, too plain to be compared to Lily. Too plain to be noticed. Like him.

"I'm Peter Pettigrew. Your sister couldn't make it, so I'm here to take you home," he says, shrugging. His hand is halfway out in a handshake, because his mother told him to never kiss a Muggle woman's hand.

Petunia ignores his hand. "What do you mean, she couldn't make it? She promised!" Her voice is too shrill to be attractive, her tone too blunt.

Peter shrugs. "Her friend Marlene is in trouble and she needed to stay with her. I can Apparate you home if..."

He trails off at the dark look she gives him.

"You will _not_ do magic on me," she says, lip curled up. Oddly enough, she looks slightly more attractive when angry. Or maybe Peter's just desperate, just trying to find her appealing in some way.

"I'm supposed to get you home safely," he says. "I promised." Lily would kill him if he let something happen to her sister. Who knew what the Muggles around them could do to her? "Could you just—"

He stops and sighs hopelessly at the look on her face. It says he doesn't have a chance in the world of convincing her. "I saw Mug—people—get into metal transportation boxes. Could we get one of those?"

She sniffs. "It's better than—" she looks around "—_your_ way of travel."

Peter wisely says nothing. It seems she has one thing in common with Lily: her temper. Petunia calls a Muggle transport device—a cab, she calls it—and he wrestles his limbs inside. Whoever said Muggles have some redeemable things has never smelled the inside of this cab, he decides.

Lily wouldn't agree, he thinks. Lily, the one good thing that's come from Muggles.

"You must think you're so chivalrous, taking me home. I'm taken, I'll have you know," Petunia says after a few long minutes of silence, the soft music playing on the radio the only noise.

"I'm not interested in _you_," Peter says, unable to catch the inflection.

"Why not? It's not like Lily will ever look at _you_," she tells him much too honestly. She assumes easily, but she's right.

Petunia has that same bite of Lily's, the one that almost made her seem Slytherin. Not that Peter cares about House boundaries, most of the time. When he's with James and Sirius, he regresses back to his prejudiced self, but usually he's pretty open minded. When you're thinking about betraying your best friends for your ancestors, House boundaries are a small issue.

"Aren't you taken? Should you be even saying that?"

"We've been out a few times, but we're on a break at the moment. I think we'll get back together soon, though, once his job at his father's drill firm is stable."

Peter nods and wonders what drills are. They must be important.

"So what about you?" Petunia asks after a while. Peter checks his watch. They've been moving for half an hour. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

On a whim, he says, "Yeah." Even this woman, this _Muggle_ whose looks are barely average, is in a relationship, what does it say about him?

"Is she a—" Petunia glances at the driver "—you-know-what?"

"Yeah, she's a witch." His ideal girlfriend before he met Lily: pure-blooded, pretty, kind.

Petunia chokes as the driver glances back at them.

"Don't say that!" she hisses. "What's wrong with you?"

Peter shrugs. A lot of things. He's a possible future Death Eater, for one. He can't talk to a woman, which is his current problem.

They're back to silence again, and soon they're at a house that looks so ordinary, so proper, that he wants to light a Dark Mark over it. Lily wouldn't approve. Neither would James, for that matter. They've never understood the way he thinks, the way his mother and mother's mother and countless men and women before him have thought. Even if Pettigrews are the lowest of purebloods, they're sky-high compared to Muggles.

Petunia ushers him into her house and pointedly says, "Thank you. Goodbye."

Peter Disapparates without another word. He has a story to tell to his mother, a story about a courteous pureblood and rude Muggle. It will make her laugh.

.

He's skipped work for Lily, so he makes up for it by doing some extra paperwork while his boss occasionally comes in and says, "Good work, Patterson." His job in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes involves a combination of pushing paperwork, dealing with clients, trying to get his boss to remember his name, and meeting Snape, who drops off potion orders.

James had teased him for weeks about how he worked with the git, Death Greaser Extraordinaire. Except Peter couldn't see it. What would the Death Eaters want with someone like Snape?

A corner of his mind whispers, _What would the Death Eaters want with someone like you?_

Today, though, as Snape sneers at him, Peter can't feel a thing. He thinks of Lily's Muggle sister and the way she acted, the way she thought she was better than him, as though he was the embarrassing one. The blight on the earth's surface.

.

Days later, when he gets back from work, he finds that someone's left a message for him. He's oddly popular. James and Sirius haven't called him much since they all graduated, and Remus is too busy trying to keep a job to hang out.

"She seemed like a nice girl, the redhead," his mother tells him as he fusses with her blankets. "Your friend is very lucky. Do I know her parents?"

Peter almost says his mother shouldn't use present tense, he nearly says his mother never leaves the house. She doesn't know anyone at all.

"Lily's a Muggle-born," he says instead, and watches his mother's smile fade.

"Well," she says, "she's still very beautiful. Not beautiful enough for my Peter, though."

They share their secret smile, and Peter kisses her forehead before he leaves.

Sometimes, he wonders if his mother really does think he's attractive, or if she just tells him platitudes like James, Sirius Remus and Lily do.

.

The message is Lily's graduation gift for Petunia, which the Muggle had thrown back at her when Lily tried to give it to her.

"Could you tell me what she thinks of it, if she takes it? If you don't mind of course?" Lily asks, sweet and sincere and talking to only him. "I think you got through to her last week."

"It was nothing," Peter says, trying to block out everything he felt from his voice. Anger. Distaste.

Maybe Lily hears too much, because she says, "It wasn't. Thank you. It was nice of you."

And suddenly there's another head next to Lily's, James' black mess of curls, easily resting against Lily's freckled cheek.

"What she's trying to say," James states, "is that Tuney's a real piece of work. But if you're into that…" He wiggles his eyebrows.

"What? Peter? Really?" Lily asks.

Peter feels like he can't breathe, and he splutters incoherently. "N-no," he squeezes out. "Never!" They laugh. Peter can't tell if they believe him, but he needs to do something, anything, to make this better. "Really, I don't. I wouldn't!"

Petunia is everything he doesn't want. Lily is the exact opposite.

"Okay, okay," Lily says, still smiling just a bit. She hands him the present, a box tied with a red and gold bow, and says her last piece of news, "We're telling everyone personally. James and I are having a baby! Can you believe it?"

.

Three hours of shooting spells at dummies later, Peter still can't believe it. He doesn't want to believe it. He wants to stick his head in the ground, in his pillow, in a silver mask, anything to stop it from happening.

He's at a pureblood shooting range, a place introduced to him by Lucius Malfoy, and it's only a matter of time before Malfoy finds him there.

"How has life been treating you, Pettigrew?" he asks, leaning on the counter just a little.

"Fine," Peter snaps back. "How's your leg?"

It's his one moment of scorn before he remembers Malfoy's aim statistics on the scoreboards. Malfoy is expectedly unimpressed. "Better than last week."

He takes his wand from his pocket and lengthens it into a wooden cane. Peter can't help feeling gleeful that Malfoy, the boy-turned-man who'd bullied him in school, now has a limp after the attack from the Prewett brothers. The glee vanishes when he remembers what happened to the brothers afterwards. What Malfoy could do to him.

"Sorry," Peter says.

Malfoy raises an elegant eyebrow, as if to say, _Go on. I asked you a question, serf. _

He knows why Malfoy's still talking to him, of course. He's grooming him toward his cause, because even though Peter is magically weak, stupid and poor, he's a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and a graduate of a class with many prominent Light purebloods. If Lucius can get to him, Peter can get to them for the Death Eaters.

Peter tells him the whole story, tripping over words and feelings like a first year, feeling both better and worse when he finishes. "I don't like them all the time. I should. They're my best friends, but sometimes, I… I want to hurt them."

Lucius Malfoy nods, serene at Peter's words. He isn't disgusted like James would be. "I won't tell anyone," he promises, patting Peter on the back. "Join me this weekend, and you might find something to cheer you up."

Peter doesn't have a chance. He's drawn to Malfoy's words, the promise of strength and revenge in them. The way Malfoy can promise him the world if Peter puts on the mask and gives his word.

"I'll see if I can make it," Peter answers, just as he usually does. Maybe he'll even go this time.

.

He must be a masochist, because he stops by James' and Lily's place with flowers the next evening.

"You shouldn't have," Lily says, but she takes them with a smile. They're fresh and her favourites, Peter knows.

Remus is already there, looking worse for wear but smiling fondly at the couple. Sirius is in the kitchen, looking for drinks. Peter tries to smile, but it comes out as a grimace instead. Spread out on the two couches in James' living room, they look like the best friends.

Peter feels like an outsider, like an enemy.

"Are you missing my sister already?" Lily teases easily, her head in James' lap.

"The one who said I'd come to her house to, I quote, spread my warts?" James asks, wrinkling his nose.

"A _Muggle_?" Sirius asks. Remus can't speak for the shock.

"There's nothing wrong with being a Muggle, Sirius. In fact, Peter is being modern and forward-thinking, aren't you?"

It's a catch 22, and Peter agrees with Lily like he always does.

There's nothing wrong with dating a Muggle, Peter tells himself.

_Especially for me. Because Peter can't pick up a witch. Isn't that right, Lily?_

"We're in dangerous times. Even if I don't really like her, we should still be looking out for the Muggles," James says uncomfortably, and kisses Lily when she smiles at him approvingly. "Who knows who the Death Eaters will target? You're doing a good job, Pete."

"It'll be fine," Sirius says. "It's not like Malfoy knows where she lives. Champagne and a toast, anyone?"

He doesn't notice Peter's internal struggle, the words he longs to say.

You shouldn't be looking for purebloods like Malfoy, Peter almost screams. He wants to. He's choking on the words that he's wanted to say for so long.

You shouldn't be looking for the idiots who are open about their allegiance. You shouldn't be baiting the layabout rich who whine about Mudbloods but go back to their manor homes at the end of the day. You should be looking for the poor ones, the ones whose families used to be grand but have fallen from grace. The ones who have only magic and blood to be proud of.

Not looks, not riches, not cushy jobs. Just an old last name and a book of records stretching centuries.

He's not the only Gryffindor almost-Death Eater. There's one more that he knows of, a bloke who graduated three years above them. Handsome, kind, friendly. Unnoticed by the Order. It's death for Peter if he reveals the other man, who he knows likes to use the Blood Boiling curse and has great taste in champagne.

Better than Sirius' swill.

.

Later, Peter Apparates to Petunia's home with the package in hand. She opens the door, and he says, "Happy graduation." And hands her the present before she can blink.

"She sent you again?" Petunia sniffs. "Come inside."

"That's nice of you."

"I don't want Mrs. Ackley to think I'm a bad host. She knows the Dursleys, you know."

Peter doesn't know, but nods all the same. They stand in the hallway, Petunia being unwilling to let him go any further inside, Peter not knowing what else to do. James would sweet-talk her somehow. Lucius would curse her blind.

What would he do? The Death Eater meeting was tonight. What would Peter do?

All Peter can do is think of Lily. Lily, who's forever James'.

There isn't much room in the entryway, only the length of a wand between them. Petunia is scowling slightly. This close, Peter can see the soft freckles on her cheeks. They are like Lily's. Knowing as he does it that it's stupid, Peter leans in and kisses her. He hasn't kissed anyone since Mary McDougal in seventh year, in a closet on a dare.

Petunia's lips are softer than he expects, and for a moment he thinks she'll stay and let him imagine Lily there. They are the same height.

But all too soon she pushes him away and says, "Get away from me. Now! I can't believe I let you into my house. Even a Muggle like me wouldn't want you," she says, her hands clenching at her sides.

He is tired and weary, and too weak, and the silver mask waits for him at home.

Maybe it's time to give in to the inevitable end.


End file.
